1) With the rifle unloaded, or with a rag draped across the pan of a loaded rifle, lay the rifle on the bench pointed down range so you're standing behind the butt;2) Bring the hammer to full cock;3) Hold forefinger of left hand across under lower jaw to steady the hammer in place;4) Hold a steel or brass shafted ball starter, back edge of a hunting knife, brass rod, knapping hammer, etc, etc, in the right hand;5) Lightly tap-tap-tap-tap about 3-4-5 times across the edge of the flint to flake off tiny pieces to make a thinner sharper edge...takes very little effort and about 10 seconds.

Resume shooting...

Roundball's ML Formula:
"Whompability...Across The Fields and In The Woods"

Here's a pic of my flintknapping tools. Knapping flintlocks is a lot like knapping small arrowheads, small implements can be used. small copper hammer, small copper rod embedded in a piece of dowling or even a penny will re-sharpen and refinish gunflint correcting the angles

It really only needs to be tapped VERY, VERY gently, lightly...just think of the object in your hand as being a light wooden pencil...standing behind it, you just need to reach forward towards the frizzen, and gently come down on the front edge of the flint in an arc from above and tapping down onto the front edge at about a 45 degrees angle.

Imagine the flint is an egg and you don't want to break the shell...just lightly tap it to get a crack in the egg without breaking through.

And you're not going to see huge physical differences to the flint...as long as just a few tiny little flakes come off the bottom (out of sight) of the edge, that's it...the tiny pieces will only be a fraction of the size of a finger nail clipping.

In fact, you'll have to look closely to see changes in the edge but it'll have some spots/edges as sharp as a razor so be careful and don't cut yourself

Roundball's ML Formula:
"Whompability...Across The Fields and In The Woods"

For sharpening flints in my gun I use a small set of napping pliers. These allow you to just nibble the edge and you back in business. For actual knapping I have many of the tools in the photo above. Also I never, never hammer a flint while in the cock with anything but a small brass knapping hammer or use the bottom of the frizzen. IMO this over time or on the first good strike can cause miss-alignment of the angle of your cock. I know its common practice BUT you must be careful.

1870's the Brandon flintmines are waning and Sydney B J Skertchly goes to record the art before it dies out. He produces a wonderful book, reprinted in 1984 as a numbered 400 copy edition, buy it if you see it. "Skertchly on Gunflints"

Yeah- an that was BEFORE bandaides & CA to close wounds. I have used CA and it works splendidly for large gashes. A word of caution - the kicker smarts a bit. It'll make your eyes water & probably isn't very good for you, but it works very well indeed.: My palm is now healed, thanks to CA - quite a gash from 'brushing' the flint's corner while held in the cock. I didn't use kicke ron this one - and they say you can't teach an old dog new tricks!